With the very sad passing of the great David Bowie, tributes have poured in from around the world. Bowie, as the NYTimes writes, \u201cTranscended Music, Art and Fashion<\/a>.\u201d Among them a number have noted his youthful connections with Buddhism<\/a>, which was growing in popularity in the England of the 1960s. Of particular interest is an in-depth blog dedicated to the songs of Bowie, aptly named \u201cPushing Ahead of the Dame: David Bowie, song by song.\u201d In one post there, the author, Chris O\u2019Leary, recounts Bowie\u2019s early fascination with the Tibet and Buddhism of Heinrich Harrer\u2019s 1952 book\u00a0\u201cSeven Years In Tibet<\/a>\u201d:<\/em><\/p>\n David Bowie discovered Buddhism in his early teens, thanks to his step-brother Terry\u2019s beatnik leanings, the novels of Jack Kerouac and a few Penguin paperbacks that gave him the basic schematics of the religion. It was Harrer\u2019s book that set him a-boil: \u201cWhen I was about nineteen I became an overnight Buddhist<\/em>,\u201d he recalled in 1997. \u201cAt that age a very influential book for me was called \u201cSeven Years In Tibet\u201d\u2026[Harrer] was one of the very first Westerners to ever spend any time in Tibet; in fact, one of the very first Westerners actually to go into Tibet and discover for himself this extraordinary existence and this incredibly sublime philosophy.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u201cSilly Boy Blue,<\/a>\u201d Bowie\u2019s first Buddhist song, was inspired by Harrer\u2019s descriptions of Lhasa and the Dalai Lama\u2019s winter palace of Potala, the song opening with the yak-butter statues made for celebration days.<\/p>\n \u2013 Pushing Ahead of the Dame | Seven Years in Tibet<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Rod Meade Sperry at Lion\u2019s Roar writes that Bowie nearly became a Buddhist monk<\/a> at Samye Ling, the monastery of up-and-coming \u201cCrazy Wisdom<\/a>\u201d guru\u00a0Ch\u00f6gyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in Scotland in 1967:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was within a month of having my head shaved, taking my vows, and becoming a monk,\u201d Bowie has said about that period of his life. But, as the story goes, he was torn and so sought Trungpa\u2019s counsel. His\u00a0reply to the\u00a0famous young seeker? That he should remain a musician, for that was how\u00a0he could be of the most benefit.<\/span><\/p>\n Lion\u2019s Roar | That time David Bowie almost became a Buddhist monk<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Writing for the Guardian in 2013, Sean O\u2019Hagen casts doubt on how influential Buddhism was on the young Bowie:<\/p>\n \u00a0In the mid to late 1960s, he immersed himself deeply, but often briefly, in whatever caught his imagination, whether Buddhism \u2013 he went on a retreat to a Buddhist community in Scotland in 1967 \u2013 or mime \u2013 studying seriously under\u00a0Lindsay Kemp<\/a>, his first artistic mentor.<\/p>\n Aligned to all this cosmic adventurism, though, was his oddly old-fashioned attraction to showbusiness, vaudeville and musicals. As the pop-culture historian\u00a0Jon Savage<\/a>\u00a0points out, Bowie\u2019s\u00a0eponymously titled debut album<\/a>, released in 1967, is \u201calmost defiant in the way that it contains almost no trace of contemporary pop modes. Despite Bowie\u2019s deep interest in Buddhism, he had no sympathy with the hippy package: the record was a strange mixture of exaggerated, cockney vocals \u2013 inspired both by\u00a0Anthony Newley<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Syd Barrett<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 intricate arrangements and songs that constantly shifted tone and mood, from horror to farce, from Edwardiana to fairytales and back again.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At the Hollowverse, Tom Kershaw writes that:<\/p>\n Like so many aspects of this man, Bowie is difficult to pin down\u2013even to himself. By his own account, he\u2019s tried about every religion in the book, saying:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I was young, fancy free, and Tibetan Buddhism<\/a> appealed to me at that time. I thought, \u2018There\u2019s salvation.\u2019 It didn\u2019t really work. Then I went through Nietzsche, Satanism, Christianity\u2026 pottery, and ended up singing. It\u2019s been a long road.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But in his advanced years, Bowie\u2019s real spiritual views have come out. He said:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I\u2019m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There\u2019s that little bit that holds on: Well, I\u2019m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months. [in 2003]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Hollowverse | The religion and political views of David Bowie<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n However, returning once more to \u201cPushing Ahead of the Dame\u201d we find it argued that Buddhism was indeed an influence on early Bowie songs. There O\u2019Leary writes that Bowie \u201cmeant for\u00a0the backing chorus of his [1965] single \u201cBaby Loves That Way<\/a>\u201d to sound like chanting monks.\u201d Have a listen:<\/p>\n\n
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